minimalist (u/minimalist)

minimalist commented on Graphene OS: a security-enhanced Android build lwn.net/SubscriberLink/10... · Posted by u/madars

strcat · a month ago

Android 16 no longer provides device trees for Pixels as part of the Android Open Source Project. It's important to note it doesn't provide those for any other devices. There are no other OEMs providing similar AOSP support. A few OEMs publish more basic device trees for older Android versions. This was Pixels losing one of their advantages compared to non-Pixels but it was never one of our hardware requirements, which are listed at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. It isn't part of why Pixels are the only devices meeting our requirements. We're working with a major Android OEM to change that though, hopefully for 2026 or at least 2027.

GrapheneOS typically ports to new yearly Android releases in a couple days and tends to have it reach the Stable channel in under 2 weeks. We completed our initial port to Android 16 in a similar time period after the release on 2025-06-10. However, we then had to reimplement device support in a similar way to how we would support a non-Pixel device. Our initial production release based on Android 16 was published on June 30th. As usual, we had to spend around a week making a series of releases fixing regressions reported by users. It reached our Stable channel on July 8th.

Since our port to Android 16 took significantly longer than usual, we backported most of the Android 16 firmware, all of the kernel drivers and parts of the userspace device support to our now obsolete Android 15 QPR2 branch and did a few more releases based on Android 15 QPR2 where we were able to provide the full 2025-06-05 patch level which also turned out to be the full 2025-07-05 patch level due to no vulnerability fixes in the July 2025 Android Security Bulletin or Pixel Update Bulletin. This was an unusual approach and not generally a reasonable way of doing things. We were able to do it successfully.

It won't be nearly as much of an issue going forward since we dealt with building the new automation we needed. Our port to Android 16 QPR1, Android 16 QPR2, Android 16 QPR3, Android 17, etc. shouldn't be nearly as difficult and we should get back to our typical porting time for major releases.

minimalist · a month ago

I suppose this means that supporting future Pixel devices will be more difficult? If someone has the ear of anyone at Google, especially someone who works with Android, please share this cause with them!

minimalist commented on Graphene OS: a security-enhanced Android build lwn.net/SubscriberLink/10... · Posted by u/madars

minimalist · a month ago

Last I heard, Google discontinued publishing device trees and driver binaries for Pixel devices with their recent changes to their stewardship of the AOSP [0]. Was it something definitive or are they merely delayed? If the practice is being discontinued, what would be the reason why? Doesn't publishing these artifacts create a business case for customer demand for the Pixel devices? Or is there some cost that outweighs the benefits? Is it maintainer overhead?

I didn't bring this up when it was a news story last month because there was a lot of cynicism in the thread, but I am genuinely curious. I am really grateful for both GrapheneOS and Google for creating a phone platform that Just Works for the essential stuff and that I can reasonably recommend to non-technical people!

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259921

minimalist commented on Show HN: Workout.cool – Open-source fitness coaching platform github.com/Snouzy/workout... · Posted by u/surgomat

minimalist · 2 months ago

It does not appear to be working for me right now, I get "error loading exercises".

What are your thoughts about the wger project [0]? It is a FLOSS AGPL-licensed self-hosted fitness/workout/nutrition manager that has existed for almost a decade (I think?) It's a django app and has a companion flutter app that runs on android/ios/windows/linux/macos. It supports multiple users and could even be used to run a gym. Body.build [1] is a newer FLOSS project (also browser-based) that is focused around building a weight lifting program. The author of body.build also contributes to wger.

I'm using wger in my homelab and while there are a lot of moving pieces to the self-host process, it works well. I'd say the biggest limitation is the comprehensiveness of their exercise database, but that is something that many people have recognized and are steadily expanding. If anyone is willing to contribute exercises (and exercise media) to this AGPL licensed project, they would definitely appreciate it!

[0]: https://github.com/wger-project

[1]: https://github.com/Dieterbe/body.build

minimalist commented on Raspberry Pi Lidar Scanner github.com/PiLiDAR/PiLiDA... · Posted by u/Venn1

CamperBob2 · 4 months ago

Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement]

Being all polite and non-political and shit is what brought us to this pass.

Never lose an opportunity to make the people who voted for the current state of affairs feel isolated, rejected, guilty, and generally bad. Being nice to them doesn't work.

minimalist · 4 months ago

Please, I don't want to come on to HN to see politics injected into everything. Stay on reddit for that.

I logged in to make a comment regarding something within my area of expertise: the technology present in the parent link and how this technology has been accessible to hobbyists for over 10 years.

minimalist commented on Raspberry Pi Lidar Scanner github.com/PiLiDAR/PiLiDA... · Posted by u/Venn1

Liftyee · 4 months ago

It's impressive that the cost of usable LIDAR tech is well within the reach of personal projects now. The sensors used on the first self-driving cars (from companies like SICK, etc.) likely perform much better but the price point of multiple k$ is not really viable for experimentation at home.

Not to make everything political, but I wonder how the US tariffs will affect electronics-adjacent hobbies. Anecdotally, the flashlight community on Reddit has been panicking a little about this.

minimalist · 4 months ago

> Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement]

For what it's worth, this type of Lidar scanner was possible to make well over a decade ago with ROS1, a Phidgets IMU, a webcam, and a lidar pulled out of a Neato vacuum (the cheapest option at the time). This would be around the difficulty of a course project for an undergraduate robotics class and could be done with less than 200 USD of salvaged parts (not including the computer). Hugin was also around over a decade ago.

It's still a nice little project!

minimalist commented on Show HN: I've Built an Accounting System github.com/denys-olleik/a... · Posted by u/journal

FredPret · a year ago

Imagine it’s the year 1890 at Standard Oil and they have a building full of filing clerks.

It’s run by the great John D Rockefeller, of which you can read more in the fantastic biography Titan. He’s a stickler for accurate accounting at all times.

Now they decide to buy a batch of barrels for all their oil.

- one clerk runs down to the cabinet with a file for all the items SO buys.

- another cross-references each item and fetches the files of the vendors for each of those items

- another cross-references with past invoices to get the most recent price for each item

- another gets a list of locations SO uses to store barrels

Now the purchasing manager looks at all this and decides which barrels to buy, from which vendor, how many, and where its getting delivered. So he writes out a purchase order / PO.

So back to the clerks:

- one runs along to file the PO in the PO filing cabinet. Remember, uncle John is watching and he wants to go to any cabinet or any manager at any time and get up-to-date details of what's going on.

- another one goes to the Items cabinet, finds the barrels we ordered, and notes on them that a PO was issued for this many barrels on such and such a date.

- one actually sends a copy of the PO to the vendor.

Skipping over some steps for simplicity, the barrels arrive one day with their invoice attached.

An Invoice! Now the army of clerks swing back into action. They get their guy at the warehouse to send them the original invoice that came stapled to the barrels. Then:

- one runs to the PO cabinet, finds the PO that was issued, marks it as done, and writes the invoice number on it.

- another one runs to the accounting department. There they make the double-entry bookkeeping entries to account for the money that is now owed to the vendor, and for the inventory value that has gone up.

- another one runs to the vendor cabinet and records the purchase on their file

- another one goes to the inventory cabinet and files a record updating the inventory balance for the barrel item

- someone files a copy of the invoice for future reference

Eventually we pay the invoice:

- a clerk keeps an eye on the payment terms for this and other vendors and calculates how much cash we have to send to each vendor each month

- another runs around to each paid invoice marking them as paid

- another one actually writes the cheques and mails them off

- someone has to tell the accounting department how much money we just paid, to which vendors, out of which bank accounts

Things get fun when these barrels eventually get sent to a production facility and filled with oil. Now the clerks have to do the correct filings to destroy the barrel items along with a quantity of oil, and create a new filled-barrel item. The cost of this depends on all of the cost of the barrel item, the oil, the labour, and some other things, all of which is determined using past entries.

This is a toy example and the complexity spirals from here. For example another invoice can arrive from the people who transported the barrels. Depending on your CFO, or the current accounting laws, you might want to include that in the cost of the barrels, or record it as a business expense.

You might have different departments who do their accounting separately, so now each transaction has to be split correctly. You might want to track the hourly rates of each employee and factor that into the cost of each finished-barrel item, and also tracking what everybody should get paid.

Add to this any idiosyncratic business rules stemming from management decisions, laws, unique physical constraints, or whatever.

An ERP system is all of these cabinets and their rules put into a relational database with a front-end.

minimalist · a year ago

Thank you for the excellent reply! I think I understand now... Once a business starts transacting in things other than a single type of money (say durable goods, consumables, services, or say other types of money) it becomes necessary to reconcile these non-money-denominated accounts. And for that, you need more than a single database, or single spreadsheet. You need a suite of persons or softwares that can __account__ for these stocks and flows, and the rules that come along with them.

And that is called ERP, of which "simple" money accounting is but one component of.

So root commenter's objection was more along the lines of: "those are some bold claims for mere money-accounting program. if you used a _real_ accounting program (as in an ERP) then you'd understand how complex peoples' needs can be". And the tone they phrased it elicited the downmods :)

I guess I understand. I still admire the OP and the frustration that fueled their desire to create a tool that works for them. And the tone of the readme is very endearing, it reminds me of the things my IRC friends would say to kick-off a lively discussion...

And so it has!

minimalist commented on Show HN: I've Built an Accounting System github.com/denys-olleik/a... · Posted by u/journal

gamblor956 · a year ago

If you think Intuit is accounting than you don't really know what accounting is.

Off the top of my head... every major ERP has better functionality, customizability, and usability than this relatively simple take on a financial system. Even Workday... and that's an accounting system grafted on top of a HR platform.

This is basically yet another product created by a programmer that doesn't actually know enough about the field they're disrupting that they don't even realize that their disruption was obsolete a decade ago.

And no, as is this program couldn't be used to run a bodega, let alone an aircraft carrier.

minimalist · a year ago

Please elaborate more, my friend! Let's say that I was^W am a programmer who is seduced by the plain-text accounting / one-database-is-all-you-need notion and I think my needs will be simple, as I can keep the business of my bodega all in the RAM of my brain... Or at least I think I can.

How can this go wrong? What are some of the needs that compel the bodega owner to move on to more sophisticated tools? Is it because of calculating things like taxes and hourly rates and the like?

minimalist commented on Ask HN: Device for Music and GPS · Posted by u/WorldDev

minimalist · a year ago

Like the other commenters have mentioned, if the premise is to prevent the child from going online, I am not sure if I agree with this approach...

But to answer your question as stated: it looks like the Sony Walkman models NWZ-Z1040/Z1050/Z1060 runs (ran?) android and has a GPS receiver, but no cellular capability.

https://helpguide.sony.net/gbmig/44361551/v1/eng/contents/07...

I can't find any newer Walkmans that have GPS receivers, but you might want to look there. I know everyone is telling you to use a old phone, but I am sure that you can find a device to suit your needs. Good luck!

(If you are handy, you can also use an old phone, open it up, and physically destroy the antennas, although this might hurt the battery life if the firmware decides to crank up the transmission power to maximum, if it cannot "see" any networks or towers).

But for maximum street cred, I'd go with two devices: a 'vintage' mp3 player and a 'vintage' or rugged GPS receiver. The more obscure the better. Those things are cool now!

Edit: The Garmin iQue were also Palm PDAs that had a GPS receiver and a headphone jack. They also look pretty rad and turn-of-the-century :) But remember, at some point children establish their own tastes and identities partially defined /against/ their parents, so just because you might think that something is cool doesn't mean that they would.

minimalist commented on ReMarkable Paper Pro remarkable.com/... · Posted by u/buro9

minimalist · a year ago

Just for everyone's reference, there is a rich community of third-party packages [0] ("apps") and launchers for rM and rM2, so it's possible to add on any number of sync (syncthing), encryption (gocrpytfs), epub (koreader), web browsing (netsurf), vnc (vnsee), wacom driver and more. The user get's root shell access from the beginning, and you can automate all sorts of things using systemd and standard shell utilities.

The out-of-the-box software may be a bit barebones for some power users, but you can certainly add-on the functionality that you desire.

[0]: https://toltec-dev.org/testing/

minimalist commented on Boox Palma Review: A Phone-Sized E-Ink Android Device That Isn't a Phone ewritable.com/ereaders/bo... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

minimalist · a year ago

I don't like being negative, but I feel like I am obligated to pipe up every time I see Onyx products hit the front page here[0], because I was one of the people who politely requested that Onyx abide by the terms of the licenses for the Free Software that they use in their products. To this day, they refuse to do so.

- Onyx still doesn't release kernel sources for their products.

- Onyx still uses outdated and vulnerable builds of Android, with questionable settings such as disabling SELinux

- Their devices are very chatty back to servers in the PRC. And their privacy policies are pretty bad (and by bad, I mean non-existant! [1])

- Their digitizer API is not very documented and difficult to build off of, so claims of being friendly to 3rd party developers are overblown.

- They shut down their support forums when the chorus of disgruntled customers began to get too loud

And even worse, they are using claims of "anti-China movement" as an excuse to not comply with the GPL [2].

Please, we've got to stop shilling this company's products with these affiliate-link blogs. They seem completely opposed to the hacker 'ethos' of this site. Otherwise, why not also shill the hundreds of Oppo or Honor or Huawei phones being released every year?

Edit: To give a positive remark, I recommend the reMarkable tablet. It's what I purchased after I sold my onyx tablet. It runs linux and they give you root access out of the box! There is a vibrant community of people developing programs for the rM and even running other linux distros on the device.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041543

[1]: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/onyx-bo...

[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin...